Documents show DOJ held classified Epstein files despite AG Blanche's claims
Internal records reveal that the Office of the Deputy Attorney General received classified material in March 2025, contradicting earlier statements that no national security secrets were withheld.
By Anthony Shevchenko ·
Attorney General Todd Blanche has consistently told the public that the Jeffrey Epstein files contain no hidden national security secrets, yet internal records suggest otherwise. New documents indicate that the Justice Department possessed classified material related to Epstein as early as March 2025, a finding that complicates the administration's narrative regarding the transparency of the file releases.
Blanche served as deputy attorney general during the initial collection phase. In previous remarks, he stated that while the Epstein Files Transparency Act allows for withholding information for foreign policy or national security reasons, the department was not using that authority. He said there was no tranche of super-secret documents being kept from the public, claiming the agency was not withholding anything based on national defense information.
The new evidence contradicts that position. An eight-page timeline from the FBI's New York office details the logistics of moving files to Washington. It lists the delivery of 16 items to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General on March 25, 2025. Two of those items were explicitly labeled as Epstein Transparency Project Classified Material and two CDs containing classified materials.
The CDs were likely capable of holding hundreds of megabytes of data. The exact nature of the classified content remains unknown. A separate email from the National Security Classification Operations Unit, sent the same day, references an attachment titled Epstein - Classified Document Memo.docx. The email body notes that three documents remained classified, with one described as an FBI document classified when seen through.
The identity of the email recipient is redacted, and it is unclear if this memo refers to the same material listed in the FBI timeline. The Justice Department states it collected 6 million pages of material, reducing that number after reviewing for duplication, privilege, and relevance. The final release included approximately 2,858,498 pages, with other court records bringing the total to over 3 million.
A numerical coding system used by the DOJ reveals gaps in the released documents. Each page carries a Bates number, a standard legal identifier. In tens of thousands of instances, the main Epstein Files Transparency Act number advances by one, while older coding numbers from prior legal cases advance by two or more. These discrepancies indicate that pages were removed after the department obtained them.
One specific series of 4,500 images of checks from Epstein's accounts contains 66 missing images. Often, only the front or back of a check is absent, but in several cases, both sides are missing. Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, noted that financial records were not a permissible category for removal. She said the presence of Bates numbers is designed to help observers notice such discrepancies.
Another sequence of numbers, labeled R1, appears across approximately 995,000 released pages. This coding scheme shows gaps ranging from one page to hundreds of pages. By comparing the R1 sequence to the final release numbers, analysts calculated 1.2 million pages of identified gaps in this section alone. Most of these missing documents are emails, including communications with women who accused Epstein of abuse and exchanges with his assistant Lesley Groff and Ghislaine Maxwell.
DOJ instructions to attorneys stated that if the most inclusive email in a chain was released, the interstitial back-and-forth could be marked as duplicates. This process explains some missing emails, but duplicate messages still exist throughout the released files. The lack of a clear roadmap for these removals has fueled skepticism among legal experts and independent researchers.
Katie Phang, an independent journalist, is suing the Justice Department to force the release of additional files and explanations for the redactions. A federal judge has ruled in her favor multiple times, prompting DOJ appeals. Phang asked the court to appoint a special master to review the files. She questioned whether the omissions were intentional or the result of gross negligence, stating that the process has inhibited public trust in the released materials.
